UFC hopeful and former Marine George Lockhart back in the MMA spotlight
February 28th, 2012 | MCMAP Mixed marital arts | Posted by Andrew deGrandpre
The Feb. 22, 2010, Marine Corps Times introduced Sgt. George "Loaded" Lockhart to the rest of the Marine Corps and the world.
Today, our friend and fellow military blogger Phil Creed posted a great story about the re-emergence of mixed martial artist and former Marine Sgt. George “Loaded” Lockhart.
Regular readers of Marine Corps Times will recognize that name. Lockhart was the subject of a cover story two years ago after the Marine Corps told him he could not accept Spike TV’s invitation to appear on “The Ultimate Fighter,” a reality show for up-and-coming MMA pros seeking a shot at UFC stardom. At the time, commanders in Quantico worried that Lockhart’s participation could reflect poorly on the institution, as some of the show’s past cast members were depicted acting immature and, well, kind of gross. That story took off online, even earning a shout out from Yahoo’s MMA blog, Cagewriter.
As a Marine, Lockhart ranked among the Corps’ most skilled hand-to-hand fighters, holding the elite job of instructor trainer at the Martial Arts Center of Excellence in Quantico, Va., where he was entrusted to teach fellow practitioners of the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program how to coach and mentor others. But when the Corps denied a second invitation to appear on “The Ultimate Fighter,” Lockhart knew his days in MARPAT were numbered. He left the service last year to pursue his pro career.
And so far so good. As the After Action blog points out, Lockhart won a unanimous decision Friday night in Salt Lake City, beating Jarome “Hatchet” Hatch, in his first pro fight in more than two years. His career record now stands at 11-4 and his sights are set squarely on the UFC, where his friend and fellow Marine, former Capt. Brian Stann, has won mad respect and thousands of fans.
As Marine Corps Times reported on Lockhart over the past two years, we often heard from Marines wondering why the brass didn’t try to capitalize on Lockhart’s emerging celebrity status. A common argument from readers: Marine Corps Recruiting Command has a partnership with the UFC, so why not let a squared-away Marine such as Lockhart be the face of that relationship?
That’s a question worth pondering, particularly in light of the sport’s immense popularity among young military-aged men and the Corps’ growing acceptance of MMA. Will a day come when an active-duty Marine, with the chops to compete in the UFC, is allowed to do so?
Video: Gen. John Allen motivates soldiers after deadly attack fueled by Koran burning
February 25th, 2012 | Afghanistan General officers | Posted by Andrew deGrandpre
On Friday, Marine Gen. John Allen, the commander of all coalition forces in Afghanistan, visited a forward operating base in eastern Nangarhar province, where the day prior a man protesting the Koran-burning scandal shot and killed two U.S. soldiers. It’s a passionate address and a unique look at this Allen’s leadership style.
You can watch the video below. To learn more about Gen. John Allen, check out Marine Corps Times’ profile.
Marines in Helmand avoid Afghanistan’s Quran-burning violence
February 24th, 2012 | Afghanistan Leadership | Posted by Dan Lamothe
Afghans burn an effigy representing President Obama during Friday's protest over Koran burning at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, in Ghani Khail, east of Kabul. (Associated Press photo)
U.S. soldiers burning Qurans at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan has prompted violence and protests across the country, leading to at least 20 deaths. Noticeably absent from the fray, however, is an area that has seen more than its share of violence — Helmand province.
Helmand, occupied by some 17,000 Marines, has avoided bloodshed tied to the controversy so far, Maj. Gen. John Toolan told me today during a phone interview. He attributed the success to a plan hatched by Mohammad Gulab Mangal, Helmand’s governor, to quickly respond with several respected mullahs to areas where anger over the burning of the Muslim holy book swelled.
The governor asked Toolan to set aside a helicopter in case it was needed to get to a protest before it boiled over into violence, the general said. In Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital, Mangal and the mullahs also met yesterday with a charged crowd of people at a soccer stadium. Toolan said the governor reiterated that it was ignorance, not hatred, that prompted the soldiers to burn the Qurans — and then the crowd dispersed.
“They basically walked out of the soccer stadium and went home,” Toolan said. “It’s really been the Afghan leadership that has stepped up and taken responsibility, and I’ve seen that happening so many times over the past several months. It’s almost gotten to the point when we talk about transition and we give over the reigns to the Afghans, they won’t give it back.”
Toolan also instructed his Marines to minimize operations today, he said. Muslims typically attend the mosque on Fridays, and the general was concerned inflamed rhetoric there combined with regularly patrolling could incite violence.
“Certainly there was a great deal of concern coming out of Kabul that this Koran burning could ignite a lot of demonstrations and riots throughout the area,” Toolan said. “A lot of the heated debates and discussions come out of the mosque, so we told our armed forces to minimize their operations and wherever possible, keep out of the populated centers. There’s no need to cause any stir.”
It’s an encouraging sign for a section of Afghanistan in which U.S. forces will be drawn down significantly this year. As reported here, Toolan said today he expects there will be about 7,000 Marines left in Afghanistan by October.
A tie between Charlie Manson and Stolen Valor fakers? Yes
February 22nd, 2012 | Awards Pop culture | Posted by Dan Lamothe
With the Stolen Valor Act under scrutiny by the Supreme Court today, it seemed like a good time to bring a story out of the mothballs.
In 2009, I covered a story for Marine Corps Times that falls squarely in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category. The short of it: A man who claimed to be a retired four-star Marine Corps general had previously been married to convicted murderer Susan Atkins, ex-wife of the notorious serial killer Charlie Manson.
I know this because I went to great lengths to prove it. Donald Laisure claimed in the Marine Corps Association’s membership registry that year to have earned the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and an Air Medal in a 54-year career that included service in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf War. His registry profile also claimed that he went on to become the CEO and chairman of the board at Laisure Oil Refinery & Production Company in Greenville, Texas.
Based sheerly on those details, the profile already looked fishy. But a Google search also showed that a man by the same name had married Atkins in 1981. He reportedly decided to wed her after his psychic readings told him she wasn’t guilty of the horrific crimes of which she’d already been convicted. A records request to the state of California showed the wedding actually occurred.
In a phone interview, Laisure admitted that he had lied about his military service. He also acknowledged having been married to Atkins previously. They divorced a few months after their ceremony, and Atkins later said that Laisure was “not being totally honest with her,” according to a transcript of her 1985 parole board hearing.
I bring all this up to show the level of absurdity that can go with stolen valor issues. Based on experience covering stories like this, it’s clear that the individuals who lie about military service sometimes have myriad other issues.
That isn’t always the case, of course. Others have done it out of pure greed, reaping unearned benefits, gifts and admiration by claiming heroic acts at the expense of those who actually have performed them. Our newspaper chain has a full online database, the Hall of Stolen Valor, devoted solely to tracking and exposing those actions.
The Stolen Valor Act was passed in 2006 to deter these sorts of lies. As news reports like this point out, however, it’s constitutionality is considered shaky.
It’ll be interesting to see how the court rules on this issue. A prominent blog covering the Supreme Court suggests the justices may opt to narrowly define the law, rather than throw it out. Depending on how that occurs, that may be greeted as a victory by those who helped develop the law in the first place.
Behind the Cover: 9 ways Marines face manpower cuts
February 20th, 2012 | Behind the Cover Drawdown Manpower | Posted by Dan Lamothe
It’s no secret that the Marine Corps will trim 20,000 Marines from its end strength by fall 2016, but Commandant Gen. Jim Amos has offered few details so far about how that will occur.
Amos and other top Marine officials have been clear about how it won’t be done, of course. The Corps will not “break faith” with its Marines, they’ve said repeatedly, a catchphrase that represents their promise to not authorize reductions in force, which would result in existing contracts being broken.
What about how it will be done, though? This week’s Marine Corps Times cover story addresses that, laying out the programs the Corps has at its disposal to trim the ranks. The squeeze will affect Marines of nearly all ranks, whether they’re first-term personnel seeking a new contract or a senior officers nearing the end of their career.
As the cover image above suggests, the drawdown will likely be painful for some. The options available include paid early outs, forced retirements for officers and enlisted personnel and boatspace caps for Marines coming up on the end of their second enlistments. That’s life in the fast lane during a drawdown, even if its phased and deliberate.
This week’s Marine Corps Times also includes an interview with Sgt. Maj. Mike Barrett, the Corps’ top enlisted Marine; a look at new dirtbike training at Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command and a feature on the service’s earch for an amphibious tractor that won’t make Marines lose their lunch.
Largest explosion ever at Army post … courtesy of Marines
February 15th, 2012 | Afghanistan Battle Rattle Marines Marjah Training Weapons | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Soldiers at Fort Benning, Ga., an Army post about 90 miles south of Atlanta, were treated to a gargantuan BOOM recently by the Leathernecks who train there.
An Army TV news correspondent starts her report by saying the U.S. Marine armor school detachment there, “made history… by detonating some of the largest explosions Fort Benning has ever seen.”
A group of combat engineers was having some fun… er, conducting a training exercise with their mine clearing line charge, known as the MCLC and pronounced mik-lik, from their assault breacher vehicle and set off the kind of awesome explosion that makes boys and girls want to be in the military.
The 10-week assault breacher vehicle crewman’s course is new at Benning for Marine and Army combat engineers, who learn to use the machine that’s already shown its value in operations in Afghanistan, where it was used for the first time in combat in 2009. The Maine Corps had it first… now the Army’s getting it.
In the video, lead instructor Staff Sgt. Bobby Stone describes how he saw the MCLC in action in Marjah when he was there with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines. Said it saved lives.
“We’ve definitely made our mark today,” Stone says of the giant explosion at Benning.
Marine captain: ‘We don’t know how to supervise anymore’
February 14th, 2012 | Leadership Marines | Posted by Dan Lamothe
It has been a rough few months in the public relations department for the Marine Corps.
In separate incidents, the Corps has taken hits in the last few months for the hazing-related death of Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, the revelation that Marines in Afghanistan urinated on the corpses of dead Taliban last year and the scout sniper community’s use of the stylized “lighting bolt” SS logo popularized by the notorious Nazi SS organization.
Time Magazine’s military blog, Battleland, ties those themes together in a blog post today provocatively titled, “What’s wrong with the Marines?” Some readers will be quick to point out the mainstream media’s alleged hatred for the military, but it’s worth considering where Battleland got its fodder: an active-duty officer.
Capt. Brett Friedman argues on the Marine Corps Gazette’s blog that while it’s possible rank-and-file sniper in the recent logo controversy didn’t know the symbol’s significance, it’s not possible that all staff noncommissioned officers and officers in charge of scout sniper units across the Corps didn’t.
“No way,” he writes. “They just refused to do anything about it.”
Friedman then broadens his argument to make a broader point: “We don’t know how to supervise anymore.” A segment of his piece:
Our culture has brought us to the point where we all bear responsibility for these events. Every one of us. Every NCO who is more concerned with knocking out a checklist than mentoring his young Marines. Every SNCO who spends time searching out uniform regulation infractions. Every officer more concerned with paperwork and formats than setting an example. Every Marine, of any rank, who has told a subordinate to “shut up and color” when he or she pointed out that something was wrong. Our acquiescence to a culture of corrosive leadership has created this problem. We allowed leadership to be conflated with the creation and rote memorization of irrelevant regulations. We stopped mentoring and started poor parenting. We allowed bureaucratization to drown professionalism. We fostered a belief that we are special snowflakes who need rules, but not morality. We hazed Lance Corporal Lew. We desecrated human bodies. We posed in front of Nazi symbology. It’s our fault that the Commandant has had to publicly apologize for a problem that our poor leadership caused.
Friedman isn’t pulling punches, and he isn’t some outsider looking in. One wonders: What kind of attention will his writing receive?
Remembering the Battle of Marjah, two years later
February 13th, 2012 | Afghanistan Infantry Marjah | Posted by Dan Lamothe
In the war in Afghanistan, few campaigns have captured the public’s imagination like the Battle of Marjah.
The early stages of the fight were launched two years ago today when Marines were airlifted deep into insurgent-held territory in Helmand province. Operation Moshtarak involved more than 15,000 U.S., British, Canadian, French and Afghan troops, many of whom were pressed into a fight for their lives in a maze of dusty compounds and patchwork fields and canals.
Facebook updates from Marines I’ve stayed in touch with from my 2010 embed there show today’s date is in the forefront of many of their minds. Like the Nov. 8, 2004, launch of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Iraq, it was a life-changing day that many of them circle on their metaphorical calendars.
Those Marines remember the gunfights, improvised explosive devices and other booby traps that were prevalent there for months. They also recall the lesser known details, like huddling for warmth in the February weather and sleeping in fighting holes in the early days of the fight.
There are many more things we could say about Marjah today, but I’d rather that readers contribute. Please share your memories of the battle, whether you were at home worried about your loved one, in the thick of it or somewhere in between.
Behind the Cover: Female Marines in combat arms battalions
February 13th, 2012 | Behind the Cover Marines women | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
With an exception to a long-standing Pentagon policy, female Marines in the ranks of captain, gunnery sergeant and staff sergeant will be permitted to serve in combat arms units below the division level.
But don’t expect to see women in infantry battalions yet. The Corps is only cracking the door open for women at this point and will place them in units through the normal assignment process in staff positions for select military occupational specialties newly opened up for female officers and enlisted women.
Marines assigned to combat arms battalions will begin seeing women occupying these staff positions sometime in May and after an unspecified period of evaluation, more positions could open up.
Also in this week’s issue, find out more about the possibility of extra Korea deployments, the cuts in bonus money for pilots and read the story of one grunt’s six hours of hell and the award he earned for going through it.
Marine-led war in Afghanistan examined by New York Times Magazine
February 9th, 2012 | Afghanistan Infantry Kajaki Sangin | Posted by Dan Lamothe
I was away covering Bold Alligator this weekend, but it’s worth circling back to an impressive New York Times Magazine article published Sunday.
Pieced together after seven weeks of downrange reporting by Luke Mogelson, it examines in detail Marine operations in Kajaki, Sangin and Musa Qala districts. Those, of course, are the main battlegrounds at this point in the war in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, where about 19,000 Marines are deployed.
Details worth highlighting:
The fight in Musa Qala
Second Battalion, 4th Marines, out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., has continued to press into new areas in and around volatile Musa Qala. Mogelson describes the push to clear the village Juz Ghoray, and the struggles to fight the Taliban there.
“The Marines are going out into the hinterlands,” Maj. Frank Diorio, the battalion’s executive officer, told the New York Times Magazine. “They’re not tied to any posts. It’ll be ongoing until we leave. It’s just going to be continuous operations.”
The struggle to improve Kajaki Dam
The story describes something we’ve touched on repeatedly on Battle Rattle in the last few months — the push to secure the Kajaki Dam in northern Helmand and expand its usage.
Marine officers deployed in the region described Operation Eastern Storm to Mogelson, although it isn’t mentioned by name in the story. They also mentioned where the insurgents who escaped the assault fled. From the story:
“We put a fence in the dirt, literally,” one platoon commander told me. “Put concertina wire down and said, ‘You’re not going to get north of this area.’” Between the two fronts of marines, the officer said, “during the three to four days that we were there, I think we killed about 30 of them. They quit picking up their casualties.”
The sole escape for the insurgents was to ford the Helmand River and disappear into Zamindawar, an ungoverned desert extending from the dam to the foothills of a towering mountain range several miles north. “And they did exactly that,” the platoon commander said. “That’s the Wild West up there. We won’t ever go up there.”
Finding and marking IEDs
The story describes a variety of tactics that Marines are using in the fight against improvised explosive devices. Some of them, like using shaving cream, we’ve written about before. Others are less commonly known. From the story:
In a combat zone, each of a variety of threats instills its own corresponding fear. Unique to the fear of I.E.D.’s is a sense of powerlessness. For marines, this fear, above every other, rates the most acute. Forgoing tactical formations, they often walk in single file behind engineers with metal-detectors. They overturn suspicious rocks with hooks affixed to bamboo stalks. They mark every turn with lines of shaving cream or baby powder in the dirt. They travel over rooftops, laying ladders across alleys to cross from house to house. After dark they leave a trail of chemically treated Q-tips that glow under night-vision goggles. And they study every step they take for signs of tampered ground. But despite these precautions, there remains a limit to the degree of safety that vigilance affords, and ultimately it is chance that kills or spares you. This fear — the fear of chance and your helplessness to affect it — is a constant companion to the grunts conducting daily foot patrols across the bomb-littered country of northern Helmand.
Moving toward Kandahar
Marine forces also have been able to push away from Sangin’s district center toward the Kandahar province border, where many weapons caches are reportedly based.
The story describes Marines with 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, sweeping villages that hadn’t previously been touched. Among the findings: Marines are finding not only jugs of explosives and other supplies, but radio transmitters that can be used for remote detonation. That’s a threat that has reportedly emerged only this year in Helmand — and certainly cause for concern.